Category: David Wagoner

When you were wandering around in Singapore, vulnerable to the kindness of strangers, I thought, here it is, the world; it’s speaking. Listen. And you did. And wasn’t it beautiful, in the end?

Yours,
T.

LostDavid Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

I told them to go listen to people talking,
To write exactly how some people really
Talked to each other, and one young man
Came to the next workshop, looking bewildered,
Holding his notes by thumbtip and fingertip
To avoid contamination. He said, “This
Is how they talked. They weren’t actually
Having a conversation, just interrupting
Each other and saying whatever it was
They wanted to keep on saying. They had to decide
Today, here and now, like whether to go on
With this, this whatever-it-was they couldn’t
Think of a name for. They kept looking
This way and that way, even at me (I wasn’t
Anybody, just some student scribbling),
But never at each other. You could tell
They felt bad. They were making up their minds
About something important enough to change
Their lives maybe forever. But what was coming
Out of their mouths wouldn’t have passed even
Junior high school English. They were both trying
To say what hurt, what was disappointing, what wasn’t
Even common courtesy, let alone love.
If they’d been actors, good ones, they’d have been making
Contact. They’d have been improvising something
More interesting than shoving their chairs back
And standing up and trying to split the bill
But dividing it wrong, dropping it, picking it up,
And arguing all the way out. Now what the hell
Am I supposed to make out of this crap?”